The field of the disclosure relates generally to methods and systems for objectively determining restaurant meal costs, and, more particularly, to objectively determining restaurant cost characteristics based on transaction data resulting from payment transactions made by customers at restaurants.
Restaurant customers today are provided with an increasing number of different types of restaurants. New restaurants continually open and concepts can vary from pizza chains to fine sushi restaurants to breakfast cafes. For example, in many cities, customers have hundreds if not thousands of restaurant options. There are some known computer-related applications that allow customers to search and organize restaurant options within a geographic area. However, when the restaurant options are narrowed by restaurant category or cuisine within the known systems, there may still be an inconveniently large number of restaurant options presented to the customers. One method that some customers may use to select a restaurant is based upon cost. Unfortunately, there are no known systems that are capable of objectively rating restaurants based on cost.
At least some known websites enable customers or even non-customers to rate restaurants based on cost, which can be reviewed online by potential customers. However, at least one problem that arises with relying on the reviews of other customers (or non-customers) is that some customers have subjective views on cost. For example, a customer may believe that a particular restaurant was costly when it was actually quite low for a comparable restaurant in that area, or vice versa. Additionally, some customers may view a restaurant as costly after a negative experience or low-priced after a positive experience. Furthermore, cost ratings provided by customers on these known websites represent only a small portion of the population and can become outdated over time. Also, in some cases, non-customers may post reviews of restaurants for personal reasons and those reviews are not based on actual experiences with the restaurants.
Self-reporting by restaurants is similarly problematic in that a restaurant may misreport or misrepresent the average cost of a meal. For many customers, the aforementioned issues can make determining the actual cost of a restaurant unreliable since the information presented is not objective. In addition, these reviews are self-reported and may not account for cost variations depending on a time of day or seasonal factors that may impact the cost of the restaurant.